Many people participate in telephone conference calls, video conference calls, lectures, and/or net-meetings involving a variety of subjects. Sometimes it is known beforehand that a certain subject matter is going to be discussed in the phone call. Other times, however, topics are discussed that were not scheduled. Discussing such unscheduled topics can be problematic for people participating in conversations when such people have different levels of knowledge or understanding of the material discussed. When a speaker discusses a topic about which a listener knows little, the conversation can be difficult for the listener to follow and understand. For example, when an attorney is discussing a DNA sequence with someone having a PhD in biology, the person with the PhD may occasionally speak at a high level about the DNA sequence, i.e., at a level over the attorney's head.
In practice, a listener has several options for clarifying terms, concepts, acronyms, and any other topics of discussion. For example, the listener can take notes and look up more related information after the conference call. This option is undesirable, however, because it does not allow for real-time clarification. The listener could also interrupt the conversation to ask for more information or clarification. This option, unfortunately, breaks the flow of the conversation. This is particularly problematic when the conference call involves many people. The listener could also simultaneously look up more information using tools such as the Google™ search engine or Wikipedia™ online encyclopedia. Although this option can be useful, it requires much attention from the listener when searching for such information and the listener can become distracted from the discussion.
There are systems in the art for converting spoken words to text. These systems generally provide the actual converted text from the original audio without any additional detail.